


Dragon Slayer

by TheWeatherman



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Fairy Tale Elements, Fate & Destiny, Hannibal is his hero, M/M, No Cannibalism, Office Sex, Riding, Rough Sex, Soulmates, Will is a DID (not really), unprotected sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-23
Updated: 2016-03-29
Packaged: 2018-05-22 18:04:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6089470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWeatherman/pseuds/TheWeatherman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not all are born into the world destined to be carried away from fearsome beasts by knights in shining armour. Some people settle quite easily into modern life without having to worry about witches' curses or jealous deities or evil stepmothers with enchanted mirrors.</p><p>But some are not so lucky.</p><p>When you are like Will Graham, so beautiful that the flowers turn away in your presence, so handsome that the stars dim when you step under the night sky, you can only expect to be the subject of a fateful curse.</p><p>So it was prophesied long ago that he would await his true love in a tower guarded by a fierce dragon. And he waited. And waited. And waited...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wanderlust96](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderlust96/gifts).



_“The 12th brother can be found, most nights, in one of the bars on the city’s outer edges, the ones that cater to people who were only partly cured of their curses, or not cured at all. There’s the 300-year-old woman who wasn’t specific enough when she spoke to the magic fish, and found herself crying, ‘‘No, wait, I meant alive and_ young _forever,’’ into a suddenly empty sea. There’s the crown-letted frog who can’t seem to truly love any of the women willing to kiss him, and break the spell. There’s the prince who’s spent years trying to determine the location of the comatose princess he’s meant to revive with a kiss, and has lately been less devoted to searching mountain and glen, more prone to bar-crawling, given to long stories about the girl who got away.”_

— **_A Wild Swan_ , Michael Cunningham**

“I’m sorry I was late.”

Will squinted at the man standing before him in the cold blue light of the morning, smiling apologetically with a determined presence on his doorstep. Will was sure that he had never seen the man before, but there was an atmosphere of expectation, as if he was supposed to throw his arms around the man and greet him as an old friend. He blinked at the stranger in confusion, until the realisation suddenly dawned on him.

“Oh shit,” Will mumbled, his eyes widening. He felt sick.

His husband had only just left to pick up milk for their morning cereal, having discovered that the carton in the fridge had gone off days ago. They had indifferently fought over who should be the one to go into town, before Will gave in and resigned to pouring the curdled remains down the sink while his husband hopped in the car. Barely having sat down for more than a few minutes with his dogs eagerly buzzing about him, waiting for their breakfast, Will had heard a knock on the door.

They didn’t get visitors out in Wolf Trap, which was one of the reasons Will enjoyed living out there, even with the commute. Maybe he’d gotten used to it: the isolation, after all those years in the tower. It wasn’t what his colleagues often muttered behind his back (and yes, he heard them), that he’d become disillusioned with the human race and now resented them all. The former part may be vaguely true, but his distaste for the company of others was nothing more than a symptom of his reclusive upbringing. Finding comfort in silence was a survival instinct for him.

Dressed only in an old white t-shirt and a pair of boxers, expecting the return of his husband who had forgotten his wallet more than anything else, Will had risen from his chair to answer the knock on the door. But of all the visitors he may have anticipated that Sunday morning, the man that stood before him was certainly not among them.

“May I come in?” the man asked and Will realised with embarrassment that he had been standing there, staring at him after his muttered profanity without continuing for a good 30 seconds. He gathered himself together and nodded slowly. He supposed that it was only common courtesy to allow him to have a drink. Wasn’t he supposed to have been taught all the proper etiquette?

“I hope you like black coffee,” Will mumbled as he stepped back for the man to enter, “because we’re out of milk.”

The man accepted the invitation, though it may have been a sign of his own bravery that he virtually invited himself into Will’s home. Bravery, or manipulation? It didn’t matter. Will told himself firmly that it did not matter whether this man would have been destined to outwit the dragon with his mind or defeat him in battle. He certainly didn’t look brawny enough to have fought him, but then again, he may have had some hidden skill, like—

Stop it, Will told himself. He had closed the book on that chapter. It was all in the past. He would offer the man a drink, listen to his excuses, possibly reject his advances, then scoot him back out the door before his husband returned, hopefully to never be seen again.

Will led the stranger through his house, trying not to think how the man might also be judging him on the basis of his possessions, the humble simplicity of his house in the country, the strong smell of dogs in the air. Maybe he was counting himself lucky as he took it all in. Maybe he was realising that he had dodged a bullet, escaping a betrothal to a sullen ascetic; a life of dull monotony.

“Black coffee is fine,” the man finally answered, while taking a seat at Will’s table and graciously receiving the attention of his dogs.

Measuring out the granules into a couple of mugs, hoping that this man in his expensive-looking suit and tie didn’t mind instant coffee, Will introduced the dogs to him. “That’s Winston,” Will said, referring to the dog whose eyes were closed in a state of pure ecstasy, tongue lolling out of his mouth, as the man’s hand patted her head affectionately. “He’s new. The small one is Buster and that one drooling on your pant leg is Rosie.” He looked down, spotted the damp pool under the dog’s chin and laughed, clearly not as stuck-up as Will had initially expected given his classy demeanour. “That’s my fault. They’re hungry.”

Will placed a mug of coffee before his stranger haphazardly, the hot liquid sloshing over the sides and burning his hand slightly. He hissed in pain and quickly rushed back over to the sink to run the skin under icy cold water. The man watched him in amusement, blowing on his coffee, as Will used one hand to open the fridge and retrieve a bowl of homemade dog food.

“Would you like some help?” he asked, probably with genuinely good intentions, but Will bristled at the chivalry and just shook his head in defiance. Eventually, he managed to divvy up the food into separate bowls and withdrew his hand from the stream of water to serve the dogs their breakfast, slightly humiliated by the whole charade.

“This should sedate them for a while,” Will explained as he placed the bowls on the floor and they all deserted their new friend to come dashing over and wolf down the food.

With that taken care of, Will took a seat at the table adjacent to the other man and, with more care, placed his own drink before him.

“I should introduce myself.” A stranger no longer, the man held out his hand and said, “Hannibal Lecter.”

Will took the hand, studying Hannibal’s face as he did so. He was a good decade older than Will was, possibly coming up to 40. His hair was dark blonde, peppered with flecks of brown and already a few grey hairs, combed back professionally, while his eyes were a soft, gentle brown. He was handsome in a sort of idiosyncratic way, Will thought to himself. He was allowed to acknowledge that — it was only an observation, not a precursor to infidelity. As if on cue, he noticed Hannibal’s eyes flick down to the gold band on his finger. Will pulled his hand away.

“Will Graham,” he informed him succinctly. There was no need to flirt with the prospect of anything greater between them. The opportunity for that had passed into the wind.

“Again, I should apologise,” Hannibal sighed, but Will held up his hand, trying to cut off any sort of grand apology before it could start.

“No harm, no foul,” Will replied with a shrug and a smile, though he would have been lying if he said that there hadn’t been a time when he was filled to the brim with loathing and bitterness for the man who was supposed to have rescued him. Once, he had tossed and turned in his bed at night and wondered why fate had failed him the way it did, why his foretold prince had never slain the dragon and carried him from the tower in his strong arms. It was the story that never passed into legend — the tales of the failed rescues and dashing heroes killed in the midst of battle; princesses with their necks broken as their hair hung limply from the window; tragic accidents with no moral fable behind them but merely the products of misfortune.

Then there was Will, waiting year after year in isolation, with the great red dragon pacing back and forth, guarding his tower. He had bided his time, he had dreamt of his prince, he had prayed with each sunrise that today would be the day of his rescue. Gradually, he lost faith. But it was a slow and painful process, like being chipped away at, day after day, until he finally lost his patience. Until he finally broke down the door himself with only a ragged shard of glass to defend himself.

“I searched for you,” Hannibal said defensively, taking a sip of his coffee and imploring Will with his eyes. “I kicked up whole countries, like piles of dead leaves.”

At least that was one of his questions answered. Will had always secretly wondered, late at night when his husband lay beside him, whether his supposed saviour had even bothered. Perhaps he had no interest in rescuing some stranger from a tower, or perhaps he was too frightened? Some nights, Will dwelled on whether or not he was still searching for him somewhere and growing frustrated and distraught that he couldn’t seem to find his damsel in distress. Well, no more apparently.

Will didn’t know what to say in return. Should he thank him?

Sensing Will’s hesitation, his lack of certainty about how to continue, Hannibal asked, “Did you defeat the dragon yourself?”

“What do you think?” Will snapped, gesturing suddenly to the long scar stretching across his right cheek. It was his only remaining battle scar, after all of his other wounds had healed and his broken bones had been set right again, an ugly reminder of something that should have made him proud: his own courage. Instead, it only reminded him of his failure to kill the beast and his long plummet into the chopping waters below. He remembered how the icy salt water tried to strangle him and how he swam with his body aching all over until he finally collapsed on the shore, bloody and mangled. Some nights, he woke up in a cold sweat, struggling to breathe and certain that he was drowning in the ocean with the dragon circling overhead.

Hannibal lowered his face in shame.

Good.

“I tried, Will. My biggest regret is that I couldn’t save you.” His voice was definitely earnest, but if he came here in search of forgiveness or even redemption, Will was not going to give it to him.

“You don’t owe me anything, Hannibal,” Will sighed with exasperation and took a large gulp of coffee to avoid having to look directly at him. “Fate, destiny, true love… Soulmates? It’s all just myths and lies. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t.”

Will was surprised to find himself echoing the words of the doctor who had talked to him during his recovery in hospital, assuring him that there were thousands of others like him out there. But it had been difficult to accept when all he’d heard since he was a little boy was, “Your true love will save you.” Be it from his parents as they shoved him inside the tower, or reading the words carved into the archway over the door as the final message of hope that he read every night before he slept. That belief was ingrained into him. So perhaps he had convinced himself that the handsome blue-eyed paramedic who had rescued him from the sandy shore was who the prophecy was really about. He had been saved by him, technically. And maybe true love wasn’t all about the passion and the butterflies and the heart-stopping kisses. Maybe it was really just about simplicity, contentedness, finding someone who loved you for who you are and didn’t require anything more from you.

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Will said dismissively. “I’m happily married.” He looked at Hannibal and smiled, all his teeth on show and his lips pulled taught. His cheeks hurt. It felt fake. Could Hannibal tell that it was fake?

“Then I am happy for you,” Hannibal replied, but there was definitely an element of sadness to his tone. “Where is your partner now?”

Will shook his head. “Do you really care?”

“I would like to know that you are truly happy,” Hannibal said soberly, his hand suddenly on top of Will’s. “I could not leave if I thought for one second that you were not content.”

Will chuckled under his breath. There it was. That perfect indicator of a man who had been built up to be a hero his entire life, but hadn’t quite managed to perform his heroic duties, desperate to prove himself by whatever means possible.

“Find another damsel to rescue, Hannibal,” Will told him firmly, picking up the hand and removing it from atop his own. “I am fine.” A stony silence ensued, during which they only sipped their coffees and stared at each other from over the rims of their respective mugs, both wondering what might have been. “If you don’t mind, my husband will be home any minute now. I’d prefer that you leave before he gets back.”

Will was aware that he was being cold. He also didn’t care. He had never asked for this man to wander into his kitchen and start opening old wounds, tearing away at the stitches on his face, clawing at his heart and forgotten romantic notions.

“As you wish, Will,” Hannibal said, standing courteously and leaving half a mug of coffee on the table. He allowed Will to escort him back to the door. However, he stopped just before crossing back over the threshold and turned to face Will, placing his hands on either side of his face and gazing deeply into his eyes. In spite of his total confusion and the voice in his head that was telling him to run as fast as he could, Will remained firmly where he was and stared back at Hannibal.

Did his knees weaken? Did his heart flutter?

He was too caught up in Hannibal’s eyes to notice.

“I don’t believe you think it’s all myths and lies,” he whispered huskily against Will’s lips, then gently kissed him, chaste and short, before letting go and stepping back. Will almost followed him, he almost swayed and fell into his arms, but he remained rigid. “Just in case you ever wonder what might have been.” Hannibal took a business card out of his pocket and handed it to Will, who was still dumbstruck and incapable of refusing. The door closed and Will was left holding the card in his trembling hands.

He was still standing stupidly by the door when his husband returned, burdened with a brown paper bag filled with cartons of milk and a few grocery items.

“Are you okay, Will?” he asked cheerily, slamming the door shut with his foot and greeting the dogs, completely oblivious. He needed to stay that way.

“Yeah, just a little tired,” Will replied, closing his fist around the card and following his partner into the kitchen to help put away the groceries.

“Was someone here while I was gone?” he asked, his tone falling closer to surprise than accusatory as he noticed the two mugs on the table.

Will shook his head while the crumpled business card burned like a hot coal in his fist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is really influenced by two things: the book A Wild Swan by Michael Cunningham, and the song Dragon's Lair by Sunset Rubdown. If you haven't read A Wild Swan, you can get a feel for it by reading the first chapter, [Dis. Enchant.](http://us.macmillan.com/excerpt?isbn=9780374290252), which is the inspiration for this entire concept. I've also always wanted to write a series of stories all based loosely on Sunset Rubdown lyrics and this is the first (but I'm also working on a Beauty And The Beast one based on the song Silver Moons).
> 
> For wanderlust96, who gifted [Sweet Sanatorium](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6080679/chapters/13937373) to me :)


	2. Part Two

Will sat in his car, his hands clenched around the steering wheel and staring blankly out across the deserted street. What was he doing there? He could hardly pretend that it was a spontaneous decision, as if he’d climbed into the car and driven all the way to the Baltimore address without searching for it on Google Maps first. Then again, it hadn’t been the first time. But this was definitely the furthest he’d ever gotten. Usually he turned back after reaching the Baltimore city limits. One time, he had seen the building, driven right past and circled round the block before returning home.

He was such a coward.

Turning his head to look at the building belonging to the address on the business card that had been worn thin and faded by his hands over the last 6 months, Will considered whether Hannibal felt his presence, sitting outside in his car and torturing himself over whether or not to go inside. He laughed and shook his head. He was giving him far too much credit. Hannibal was his supposed ‘soulmate’, certainly not psychic.

Finally, he turned off the engine and its gentle purr died, leaving him in a sombre silence.

Again, Will reminded himself that there was no harm in curiosity. It was only natural that he’d want to meet the man and that didn’t have to mean that he was betraying his wedding vows. Of course, he might have been more convinced of that if he could gather up the courage to tell his partner. But too much time had passed since the initial incident, when Will had decided to keep him in the dark about meeting Hannibal. It would have only seemed more suspicious to tell him now. So he stayed silent.

Exiting the car, Will fumbled with the card in his pocket. Considering the possibility that had been enchanted by a witch and he was under some sort of love spell that compelled him to return to Hannibal, though he was prone to paranoia about those types of things. He had been told that it was fairly common for people such as himself, those who found themselves the subjects of fairy tales (failed or otherwise), to expect magic and enchantment around every corner. Long ago, he had been told that it was best to nip these thoughts in the bud, remind himself that he was no longer a part of that world, reintegrate back into modern life. The alternative was to fall back, recede into the dream-like fantasy world that he had fought so hard to escape.

“Your fairy tale is over now,” the Doctor had warned him sternly. “You need to return to reality, like the rest of us normal people. Our worlds may live side by side, but you cannot live in both.”

Will had been fairly accustomed to reality, until Hannibal had showed up, reminding him that he wasn’t normal.

“Come in,” came the reply from inside when Will had finally gathered up enough nerve to knock on Hannibal’s door. The role reversal wasn’t lost on him — arriving unannounced at the door with unclear intentions. He was also perfectly aware that he was wilfully striding into the second act of any storybook romance: the lover’s reunion. But of course, they weren’t lovers. A single kiss (unsolicited, he might add) did not constitute lovers.

Hannibal looked up when Will entered and stared at him as if he had been expecting him, but that wasn’t possible. Was it?

“It’s good to see you again, Will,” Hannibal said, standing up from where he sat at his desk, either out of manners or anxiety. “But if I don’t say so myself, it has been far too long.”

Will ignored him and instead studied the office. It was beautiful and almost regal, like a prince’s study. He had money and taste. There was no doubt that he was the fabled man from Will’s apocryphal legend.

Perhaps it wasn’t his fault. Perhaps they had been on a collision course, stars destined to crash together in a fiery explosion, but some outside force had delayed the inevitable.

“So you’re a psychotherapist,” Will huffed. “Fate must have a sense of humour.”

He was being intentionally callous, but why the hell not? Maybe he was trying to draw out a darker side to Hannibal, one that might prove his unsuitability. Of course, Hannibal reacted with patience and good conduct.

“You’re not fond of the profession?” Hannibal asked, walking round the desk to meet Will and easing the coat off of his shoulders without any resistance, as if they were old friends. They moved as such, like mated creatures who knew each other’s movements, the patterns of their breathing and withdrawn body language. Will should have told him that he wasn’t there to stay, only to satiate his curiosity and leave again, but he couldn’t find the words or the willpower.

“You wouldn’t be either if you’d been through what I went through after I escaped,” Will grumbled, vaguely haunted by the memories but mostly recovered. “I was moved immediately from the hospital to an institution. They were certain I must have severe mental damage and were all determined to analyse me, discover the effects of everything that I’d been through.”

“You didn’t find therapy at all useful?” Hannibal questioned with a hint of bemusement as he reclined against the edge of his desk.

“I don’t find strangers digging around in my brain useful, no.” Will’s tone continued to radiate bitterness, but he was there wasn’t he? And he was glad that Hannibal had decided to forgo asking him what brought him there, half a year after their brief initial meeting.

“And what profession do you work in?” Hannibal asked and Will scoffed quietly. It was such a first date question.

“Don’t you know?” Will returned dryly, with raised eyebrows.

“Why would I know?” Hannibal replied, his eyebrows raising in equal measure and Will shrugged back, coming over to lean on the desk next to him. Their bodies came into a close proximity that felt strangely natural.

“You knew my address. It wasn’t too much of leap to assume you know my occupation, too.”

“Well, I don’t,” Hannibal assured him with a comforting smile. Will studied it for a second, considering its honesty before continuing.

“Police,” he answered. “I was originally in the Pest Control Unit, but now I’m on patrol in the city.”

Will had spent many years smoking out wild beasts from their caves and throwing nets over gargantuan creatures, getting a sick pleasure out of it every time. Now he preferred to get his kicks by tackling criminals and breaking up fights.

“I can imagine that would have been difficult, given your past.” Will nearly found himself wincing at the sympathy in Hannibal’s tone. He had never been fond of pity. People assumed he’d have some kind of post traumatic stress linked to that sort of thing, but they were quite wrong. He revelled in taking down the rogue dragons and cursed sea creatures. At least, he had.

“It was actually fairly cathartic at first. Then it wasn’t,” Will admitted with a small huff of breath as he looked down at his shoes. “It felt like I was just stuck in my past, still locked up in that tower.”

“You don’t like being reminded of it,” Hannibal noted, perhaps understanding some fault on his part by showing up the way he had. Years of recovery, trying to move on, putting the hopes and dreams from his childhood away in a box at the back of his mind and locking it shut. Then Hannibal had swooped in and with a single knock at his door had swiftly blown it open again.

“My husband makes me feel normal. He saved me, you know.” Will looked directly at Hannibal. Would it hurt him to hear that? Hannibal wanted Will to love him. Would he ache to know that Will was in love with another man, soul mates be damned? “He was in the ambulance that picked me up after I escape and he rescued me.”

“Then perhaps you got your fairy-tale ending after all,” Hannibal mused. “The huntsman come along to rescue you from the belly of the beast.”

Will was surprised by his words, but continued nonetheless, trying to gauge Hannibal’s reaction. “Yeah, he was very gentle with me…”

“He sounds like a very decent man, a hero in his own right,” Hannibal agreed, his tone flat.

Will chuckled lowly and shook his head. “No, definitely no hero. Not in that sense at least. You know, he told me this story once about how he and his sister went for a walk in the forest and they came across a house made entirely out of candy, right there in the middle of the woods. Of course, they just walked away and never saw it again. I asked him why and he told me for the same reason that I don’t promise kings that I can turn straw into gold, or cross bridges with trolls living underneath. It made me realise that people only fall into fairy tales if they’re stupid.”

“Or if it is foretold?” Hannibal suggested, but Will only shook his head

“No, because you’d have to be stupid to believe it in the first place.” Will knew that his cynicism waned with every second he spent with Hannibal, the way it might not have if any random stranger had wandered up to his door that day and claimed to be his destined saviour. He knew that there had been something in the atmosphere at their first meeting, a thickening of the air, like it had been flooded with gasoline. Now someone had lit a match and he was watching the air ignite around them in slow motion.

“Then what are you doing here?” Hannibal pressed him suddenly, standing up from the desk and approaching him.

“Call it curiosity.” Will attempted to keep his voice calm, nonchalant as Hannibal’s body drew closer to his.

“About what?”

“About you, I suppose.”

“What do you want to know?” Hannibal breathed, now trapping Will between himself and the edge of his desk.

Will paused, questions racing through his head at light speed . He wanted to know so much: where he grew up, what his parents were like, what he was doing all those years that Will was waiting for him… But he also didn’t want to know any of it. He wanted Hannibal Lecter to be nothing more than a name and face and an empty promise.

“What would you have done?” Will blurted out abruptly. “After you rescued me, what would you have done?”

“After I killed the dragon and found you in your room,” Hannibal stated in a level voice, “I wouldn’t have wasted a second before making love to you.” His answer was decided, immediate, as if he’d thought it through thousands of times before. Will wasn’t unconvinced that he hadn’t, since he himself had fantasised about the exact same situation over and over when he was locked up in his tower. Will’s heart stopped for just a second, a minor palpitation as the image raced through his head.

“You just rescued me? You really think fucking you would be the first thing on my mind? Not escaping the tower?”

“Yes,” Hannibal answered confidently and then grabbed Will’s face in his hands once again, gripping his cheeks tightly and threading his fingers under the soft, brown curls. “You see, Will, I believe you don’t want the hunter with his axe to come along and save you. I think you want the wolf to come and swallow you whole.”

Will’s breath caught in his throat. He could feel Hannibal’s words against his cheek. Dropping all pretences, he reached out and grasped Hannibal’s tie, pulling the man forward to meet him in a kiss, this time deep and passionate, their tongues meeting hotly in the middle as he felt Hannibal’s hands tighten around his face. Will moved his arms to pull Hannibal’s body closer to his and they were caught in an ardent embrace.

He felt it then.

That flutter in his belly; the shooting pain in his head; the noticeable absence of a single heartbeat. This was the kiss that awoke comatose princesses and broke witches’ evil spells.

Will pulled back suddenly and he stared into the fiery depths of Hannibal’s eyes.

“You can’t fight fate,” Hannibal told him as he started loosening his tie.

Indignation cast aside for the time being, Will hastily pushed off his shoes and balled up his socks, staring at Hannibal all the while. With eyes locked, refusing to look at each other’s bodies, they unbuttoned their shirts and threw them to the floor, followed by their pants, stepping out of them to stand naked but for their boxers, covering their final decency.

They undressed like young lovers who had never touched before diving into their first night of passion — frightened virgins, nervous but excited. They uncovered themselves for the other the way they might have done all those years ago, in the room at the top of the tower overlooking the sea.

After finally pulling off their last items of clothing, they tackled each other like animals. Skin met skin and they fell to the floor in a heap, their bodies heaving and clawing at each other as their mouths met in a mess of teeth and lips.

Hannibal drew blood as he bit down on Will’s bottom lip and the younger man cried out gently, his hands reaching around his lover and drawing sharp claws down his back, eliciting a similar moan of pain mixed with pleasure from Hannibal. They wanted to mark the other physically and, in doing so, mark themselves. Will wanted to leave with Hannibal’s skin cells caught under his fingernails.

A mess of limbs, Will felt Hannibal’s hands all over his body, he felt their legs tangling recklessly together and the hot press of his erect cock against his thigh. He could hear their bodies meeting, the soft slap of flesh against flesh and their wet panting as they fought to keep their lips connected all the while. He tasted vaguely salty, Will noted, catching a bead of sweat on his upper lip. Underneath it there was the coppery taste of his own blood that lingered between their lips.

There was an awkward moment as they fought for dominance, with Will pushing against Hannibal’s shoulder and forcing him to roll over so that he could climb on top of him. Pinning the other man down between his thighs, feeling Hannibal’s hard dick against his ass, Will shuddered, completely wrought with lust. He landed his hands on Hannibal’s chest and crudely dragged his fingers against the white skin, leaving red streaks from his nails. Hungrily, he then leant over to attack Hannibal’s neck, kissing and biting and getting enjoyment out of the sharp intakes of breath Hannibal made when Will caught the skin between his teeth.

But Hannibal wasn’t willing to be put into submission so easily and adeptly located Will’s hands, which were clinging onto his hips like they were his raft in the middle of this ocean of tempestuous yearning. Whining slightly, Will pulled his mouth away from Hannibal’s neck, now wet and raw, when he felt nails digging painfully into his wrists and was forced to abandon his grip on Hannibal’s body. Taking his opportunity, Hannibal flipped them over again, this time restraining Will’s body against the floor by bringing his arm across his chest, which was rising and falling rapidly as they both found themselves struggling to breathe in the heat of the moment.

Blearily, Will blinked up at Hannibal, imagining that he could hear the crash of the waves at the foot of the tower outside the window and the screaming of the wind through the cavernous halls of the castle.

Now gently lowering his body on top of Will’s, Hannibal caressed the right side of his face, stroking the thick brown scar with the side of his thumb. He brought his lips right up to the stubble, aligning them with the long-healed gash and whispered, “I’m so sorry,” into the skin. Will closed his eyes and felt the apology seep into his pores. But suddenly the gentle moment was over and Hannibal’s hand slid up Will’s face to grab a fistful of his hair, pulling it tighter and tighter until the younger man’s defiance broke at long last and he made a sound of discomfort, writhing slightly beneath Hannibal, who smirked victoriously down at him.

Will could see there was a smugness behind those eyes, but it was the pride of a man who had proved himself, rather than pure arrogance. A thirst for kleos had always been an admirable characteristic in Will’s personal opinion, but Hannibal certainly reeked of it in a quasi-pheromonal way. Fuck, it made him hard. He jerked his hips up slightly, feeling his cock meet with Hannibal’s between their two bodies and they both groaned sweetly and simultaneously. Will’s thoughts then were feverish and nonsensical. He wanted to growl at Hannibal to fill him with his cum _now_ , but withheld, instead only murmuring Hannibal’s name while burying his face into the crook of his neck.

Like a feral creature that had been tamed, Will’s body released its tension along with the desire to fight and dominate. Hannibal gladly took the opportunity of his compliance to ravish him, running his hands over every expanse of skin, every joint and freckle and crevice. Testing with his fingers and then with his mouth, he explored Will’s body and identified every pressure point that made him moan this way or that way, how hard he had to bite down for him to cry out his name in a desperate plea, all the while neglecting his flushed and leaking erection.

Biting down on his own lip, tasting the blood from earlier, Will tossed his head to the side and let out a hissed profanity as he felt Hannibal’s fingers teasing the insides of his thighs while his tongue dipped into his belly button. Then just as Hannibal’s tongue traced down the curled hair running towards his groin, his chin meeting the head of Will’s hard-on, he pulled back.

Head shooting up, Will glared at Hannibal, as if he were defying an unspoken contract: fuck me, suck me, chew me up and spit me out.

“Stand up,” Hannibal commanded him and Will eagerly obeyed as Hannibal also rose to his feet and his long, proud dick stood before Will’s eyes. He wanted it to impale him.

Grabbing Will’s sweat-slick hand, Hannibal led him over to one of the chairs and he sat down on it, facing Will. Without missing a beat, Will crawled on top of him and met his lips with a slow kiss while he reached for Hannibal’s dick and positioned it at the entrance of his asshole, feeling the tip gently prodding at his tight entrance, making his dick twitch in anticipation.

“It’s going to hurt,” Hannibal warned him between kisses, placing his hands possessively on Will’s hips, ready to enter him.

Will only nodded understandingly, pulling away from Hannibal’s mouth so that he could keep prolonged eye contact as he sunk onto the head. Though the pre-cum helped with the lubrication somewhat, it was otherwise all burning, but Will loved it nonetheless. Lowering himself inch by inch down Hannibal’s thick shaft, Will urged himself to take it all the way to the base as Hannibal gazed at him in fascination.

When Will’s ass cheeks finally met with Hannibal’s flesh again, he allowed himself a couple of seconds to adjust before starting up a slow rhythm and grinning proudly as he saw Hannibal’s eyes squeeze tightly shut. He moved faster, the friction and the effort of the movement causing him to simultaneously pant and moan while Hannibal’s hands pulled him closer, his fingers digging into the backs of Will’s shoulders and piercing the skin. Moving with more urgency, Will tried to keep balance with one hand flat against Hannibal’s chest, and the other hand furiously stroking his own dick.

Meanwhile, Hannibal simply watched. Will could only assume that he continued to watch him fucking himself as he came closer and closer to the brink and his eyelids fluttered shut, his breath quickening and his moans becoming more strained.

Somewhere at the very edge of ecstasy, Will remembered how he had opened the door all those years ago, freed himself from his prison cell. He recalled wrestling with a scaly beast breathing hot fire which singed his hair and scorched the brimstone, before finally managing to somewhat wound it enough to flee. Broken and bleeding, he had stumbled backwards, hit the windowsill and wavered slightly before falling from the tower. He plunged into the water.

With a hoarse cry, Will came.

Hot semen hit Hannibal’s chest as Will continued to work himself up and down on Hannibal’s hard cock until he felt it inside him. Will sat back, watched his lover’s face twist with pleasure and heard the guttural moan that escaped his lips as his cum pumped into Will’s ass.

Hannibal’s eyes closed briefly, then opened again as if awakening from a long sleep. Will watched him intently.

Naked, sweating, still inside him, Will knew then that Hannibal was right. He was his soulmate, true love, knight in shining armour, whatever you wanted to call it. His happy ending was like a ripe and juicy apple hanging just within his reach. He only had to grab it and take a bite.

With a pair of scissors in one hand and a sword in the other, Will was faced with a decision. Either way, it was time for a bigger kind of kill.

Will pulled off of Hannibal’s dick and stood up. Cum leaked out of his stretched hole and ran down the inside of his leg. Hurriedly, he went back over to pick up his clothes and started pulling them on with urgency.

More languidly, Hannibal got up and walked over to him as he was buttoning up his shirt.

“That was beautiful,” he whispered, his arms wrapping around Will’s torso from behind.

Wil whirled round suddenly and shoved him hard in the centre of the chest, though Hannibal barely even stumbled. With his heart pumping and his nostrils blaring, shirt only half done up, Will limped slightly as he went to grab his coat.

“Don’t ever try contacting me again,” he said icily before storming out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry guys, I genuinely couldn't work a condom sexily into this scene... ((but always stay safe))
> 
> The bit about the scissors/sword is a direct reference to the Sunset Rubdown song. "If you are sharpening your scissors, then I am sharpening my scissors, and I am sharpening my sword. So you can take me to the dragon's lair, or you can take me to Rapunzel's windowsill. Either way it is time for a bigger kind of kill."
> 
> Thanks for the great response! I was actually taken aback by how enthusiastic it was x :)


	3. Part Three

“We’d like your help again,” Jack Crawford told him, pulling him to the side of the hallway rather than allowing him to enter his office, which suggested to Will that there was something waiting for him inside.

Sleep-deprived and mildly disorientated, Will blinked at the man as he leant in close to his face, dominating his view and placing one large hand on his shoulder. Will could only guess that the gesture — the closeness of his breath and the physical contact — was meant to come across as comforting. Jack saw him as the fragile thing that needed to be coddled, but coldly and awkwardly, like trying to wrap a delicate teacup with bubble wrap. Unfortunately, with Jack’s bulky frame and taciturn eyes, the whole thing came off as more threatening than reassuring.

“I assumed as much,” Will replied truthfully. He would have been ignorant to presume that Crawford would set him free after the so-called ‘success’ of his first catch. Surprise was not one of the many responses running through his head when he had picked up the phone the night before to hear Jack’s voice on the line again. “I’m just happy to help.”

“You’ve been visiting the Hobbs girl?” Jack asked, the inflection in his voice turning what should have been an observation into a question. Will could tell that he was testing the waters of his psyche already, trying to figure out how deep the cracks had grown after the Hobbs case.

“You could say that,” Will mumbled, not entirely sure whether it counted as a visit when she lay there unconscious, unaware of his presence, awaiting the kiss that would finally wake her. Not that Will had much faith that it would ever be delivered. Jack, of course, with his perfect marriage, who had cured terminal cancer with the power of his love, was far less cynical about the prospect of Abigail’s soulmate stumbling into the hospital room one day and planting a kiss on those ruby red lips. Maybe more pale pink than bright red now, as Will had noticed on his most recent call at the hospital when he replenished the flowers by her bedside. It was depressing to see her wilting alongside the bouquets.

“Will, I want your help,” Jack repeated with a deep sigh, “but I am concerned about how you might be handling this personally, given your… history.”

“You mean you think I’ll have a nervous breakdown?” Will deadpanned, seeing no point in beating around the bush with Jack.

“No, I think you’re vulnerable and I don’t want you on my conscience.”

Too late for that, Will thought as he remembered sitting next to Abigail’s lifeless body and crying like a father over his dead child. He’d only wanted to bring her some flowers. She had roses which were just _wrong_. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

“I’m fine,” Will lied, but he’d definitely learned how to make it sound more convincing over the years.

“I’m sure you are,” Jack assured him, though it didn’t sound as convincing as Will’s lie, “but just in case, I’ve asked for some extra input.” With that, Jack opened his office door and it was as if Will had known exactly who would be behind it before it even opened. “This is Dr. Hannibal Lecter.”

“We’ve met,” Will immediately admitted, not wanting to take part in any kind of embarrassing charade. There was no need to perform a ridiculous lie to cover up something that hardly warranted secrecy any more.

Jack looked between the two of them: Hannibal sat professionally in his chair and Will still lingering awkwardly in the doorway. “You have?”

“A couple of times, yes,” Hannibal conceded and finally turned to look at Will. All those years and Will still felt something stir within him — a simmering in the pit of his guts.

“That’s fantastic. I’m sure with your help we’ll be able to solve this before any more murders are committed.”

Tentatively, Will entered and took the seat next to Hannibal, trying to look at him in a way that gave away nothing. Tilting his head ever so slightly, he managed to cut Hannibal’s face in half with the rims of his glasses, shielding both of them from any dreaded eye contact. Nevertheless, he was paranoid that any accidental facial twitch or eye movement would give away the fact that they’d fucked the last time they’d met. Or worse, the true nature of their relationship…

“How fortuitous that our paths should cross again, Will,” Hannibal said, his voice ringing with something akin to excitement. Will nodded stiffly.

“It’s very coincidental,” Will stated monotonously.

“Serendipitous, even,” Hannibal elaborated with a challenging tone to his voice. No doubt he would make this into something; a sign from the stars that they were meant to be together, even when Hannibal had followed his wishes and never actively sought him out again.

At the beginning, the first few weeks after their last encounter, Will had expected to hear from Hannibal at any time — perhaps a phone call or a surprise visit. In the following months, Will had to fight his own desire to pick up the phone (finding with dismay that although he had discarded the business card, Hannibal’s digits were still burned into his mind) or drive back to Baltimore. Then the months became years and Will had gradually allowed Hannibal to cease existing as a real person in his mind and become a faded memory. It was as if he had come full circle and the man became a myth once again.

Will returned his attention to Jack, who stood before an evidence board showing the faces of all the victims. There were 5 of them, each with two pictures: one of them before they were killed and the other afterwards: sullen corpses with bloody, barren eye sockets and paler complexions. There were notes scrawled next to each picture beneath their names and the back drop to it all was a map of the city, showing the various places their bodies had been found.

“So fill me in on the case,” Will commanded, pushing his glasses up his nose and leaning forwards.

“Our killer works quickly. We have 5 confirmed victims from the past 3 months. They were all taken from their homes and found in random locations, but they weren’t killed in the same place that their bodies were left. Teeth pulled out, eyes missing, chests opened and their hearts are missing. Our theory is that the killer is trying to throw us off locating them by spreading the bodies over the city, but they clean up well, so we haven’t managed to find any evidence of where the victims may have been killed on the bodies or at the crime scenes,” Jack informed him, staring deeply at the information laid out on the board and going over it carefully with his eyes. “But it seems so random. We can’t find a solid link between any of the victims.”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Will asked incredulously. As Hannibal and Jack turned to look at him expectantly, their faces blank from any sudden epiphany, Will rolled his eyes and gestured to the pictures of all the victims. They by no means looked similar, men and women, each with various skin tones, some with shimmering blonde hair and others with onyx black. But they were all beautiful, even with their eyes clawed out and their teeth missing. It was the kind of exquisiteness that surpassed human comprehension and would no doubt have been rewarded by a visit from Zeus himself in any classical folklore. These were the people who got carried to the heavens gripped in an eagle’s talons, or locked up in towers and impregnated by golden rain — mythological beauty. “You can’t see what’s going on here?”

The pair of them continued to stare at Will blankly, briefly breaking away to share a look of confusion. Maybe Will could just recognise his own: the tragically handsome faces of young men and women who could not escape their own desirability, destined to be a part of something greater, just as he was. With a long breath out, Will tried to bring himself into the killer’s mind, like slipping on gloves. As always, it came to him alarmingly easily.

“They’re too beautiful for their own good. They’re full of themselves, drunk on their own happiness, thinking they’re better than everyone else who didn’t get such an epic love story,” Will revealed darkly, spitting out the words as he looked at each of the faces and felt the rage burning within him. He needed to destroy them, pluck out their eyeballs, smash in their teeth, pull out their engorged hearts. “They all got a happy ending… _But he didn’t_ ,” Will whispered despondently, feeling something sad and broken inside him and not quite managing to work out whether it was the killer’s or his own. Shuddering, he closed his eyes, trying to shake off the murderer’s skin.

Jack nodded solemnly, no doubt thinking of his own wife at home.

“That’s a very astute observation, Will,” Hannibal uttered appraisingly, but he was looking at him in a way that said he understood exactly what Will was feeling. Even without the ability to empathise, they both knew the murderer’s inner turmoil too well: the fallout that occurred from a failed fairy tale ending. “You have a real talent.”

“Were they recently married?” Will asked, sombrely studying the pictures of the victims before they had been brutally mutilated, smiling obliviously back at him, unaware their happiness would not last.

“No, all had partners, but none of them were married,” Jack answered. “Though if I’m not mistaken, they were all planning to be married soon. I suppose that makes sense in light of your observation. ”

“He needed to take away their happily ever afters,” Will murmured, more to himself than the rest of the room.

“It was premeditated,” Hannibal pointed out. “Our killer already knew who their victim was before they were taken from their homes. He had to have found a way of identifying these couples and then locating them.”

“Then the killer may have been involved in the wedding planning,” Jack theorised. “I’ll contact the partners of the victims and find out if there’s a link. Maybe they all used the same caterers, or invitation makers? Anyone who might be involved in planning a wedding.”

Will nodded in agreement. “That’s a good start. It’s likely that he comes across happy couples all the time. That’s what’s so damn frustrating…” Will was struggling to claw himself back into his own mind already and needed to take a deep breath to calm himself down.

“What kind of sick fuck wants to sabotage a happy ending like that?” Jack grumbled, folding his arms over his chest. Will noticed Hannibal shift in the seat next to him. He could feel himself being swarmed by thoughts he didn’t enjoy yet again.

“Excuse me,” Will muttered, turning his gaze back to the floor and hurrying out of the room. It was becoming too much for him. The case was hitting closer to home than he had expected and right then all he wanted was to be back in Wolf Trap with his dogs and his husband.

How had he let it all slip away, Will wondered to himself as he walked briskly back to his car, moving through the hallways with blinders on so as not to get side-tracked. Once upon a time, he’d had a chance at a happy ending. He’d let it slip through his fingers like fine dust, lost to the wind. The end.

When Will got in his car, he wasn’t sure where he was going. As much as he wanted to go back to Wolf Trap, he knew he couldn’t and the prospect of his lonely motel room felt too depressing to bear at that point. Instead, he found himself pulling into the hospital car park and heading straight to Abigail’s room.

Will threw his coat down on the sofa when he entered and immediately went to sit by Abigail’s side. She may as well have been dead. Her face was blank, whiter than chalk and completely unable to respond to his presence. The thought had definitely crossed his mind before, to lean down and place a kiss on her forehead, perchance that it might wake her up. He’d never tried, but he’d thought about it, like an atheist considering prayer in his darkest hour.

“May I come in?”

Will turned to see Hannibal hovering politely in the doorway. Briefly, he thought about saying no, turning him away from this private part of his life and the morbid vulnerability it displayed.

“Yes,” Will sighed, looking back at Abigail’s motionless face while Hannibal took a seat next to him. Blankly, he asked, “Did you follow me here?”

“I was concerned about you,” Hannibal said gently and Will snorted under his breath.

“Once again, you’ve forgotten that my safety is none of your business.”

“Would you have preferred that I never showed up?”

“No, I don’t mind you being here,” Will answered honestly. It was always difficult to be alone with her. Inevitably, his eyes would be drawn to the bandage across her neck. He would feel the hot blood seeping through his fingers as he clamped down on the wound with the pressure he could muster and cradled her head in his lap.

“No, I mean would you have preferred that I never showed up at all?”

Will fought the urge to look at Hannibal. He thought for a second, then hesitantly said, “I don’t know. I was curious about you before you came, but that was all.”

“So was I. I was curious about whether or not you were dead or alive, happy or sad. I needed to know.”

“I was content,” Will sighed, remembering that morning before his life changed forever. They’d fought about who would get the milk…

“Was?” Hannibal questioned and Will noticed the note of hopefulness in his tone.

“It was never the same afterwards.” Will reached out then and grasped Abigail’s hand in his. Nothing. Limp and lifeless.

Hannibal was silent also, perhaps having just noticed the lack of a wedding ring on his finger. Will quickly threaded his fingers into Abigail’s hiding the evidence of his unhappy ending. It was all over for him now. His last hope of happiness had dissipated the moment he’d signed the divorce papers.

“Why did you leave that day, Will?” Hannibal asked, approaching the question cautiously having come to understand Will’s temperamental nature by now, especially when it came to him.

“I was angry,” Will answered, trying to keep his response succinct, when perhaps he could have ranted on for a long time about the multitude of reasons why. _He was scared, he was guilty, he was conflicted, he was resentful._

“But were you angry at me… or yourself?” Hannibal probed warily.

Will rolled his eyes. “ _Of course_ that’s what you think this is all about. You think that the only reason we’re not together right now is because I found another man and I was trying to be a martyr by sticking with him and not following my heart. Now that’s over, I’ll be free to fall right back into your arms. That’s it, isn’t it?”

Hannibal paused before asking, “Would that assumption be wrong?”

“There’s another reason that we never got our happy ending, Hannibal,” Will scoffed. “I’ll let you work that one out for yourself.” He heard Hannibal withdraw slightly, as if the words had physically stung him. Will waited only a couple of moments in the tense silence before whispering, “Please leave.”

Without a word, Hannibal stood up and made his way towards the door. However, just before leaving, he stopped in his tracks. “I didn’t mention this back in Jack’s office. The killer may be a clerk. What better way to find happy couples than giving out marriage licenses?”

That caught Will’s attention. Hannibal was onto something. It was a perfect fit.

“Wait,” he called out hurriedly, standing up suddenly and causing Hannibal to pause once again. Will swallowed down every emotion that was fighting him at that point and instead only followed the one that was urging him to leave with Hannibal. He grabbed his coat from the sofa and shrugged it on, while Hannibal looked on perplexedly. “Let’s go apply for a marriage license.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait. I thought it would work given the time lapse and change of tone though. I made the mistake of only very vaguely outlining the last couple of chapters. Before I knew it, I had to start writing a crime thriller and coming up with a case to solve and that is SO not my forte, but I did my best and I hope you like it :) I am hoping Part 4 brings everything together, but it may require being spliced in half depending on the length.


	4. Part Four

There was a superficial resplendence to the courthouse, something that was assisted by the age and grandeur of the building, but there was also a tiredness. The buzz of noise was one that signified banality and the monotony of day-to-day life rather than excitement. There seemed to be a never-ending tide of individuals coming and going, their faces changing with each step, always just transient ghosts and never real people. Snippets of other people’s lives, minor fairy tales and story excerpts, passed constantly through the halls; there one second and then gone the next. Surrounding it all was the clinical atmosphere of paperwork and detached professionalism. Will felt as if he was in the dead silence of a library, where every book was only a few pages long with the beginnings and endings of each story completely lost.

“I can see why anyone working here would be driven to homicide,” Will joked to Hannibal under his breath and he saw the man’s lips curl upwards.

A thin echo throughout the hall amplified whispered conversations to a level of intimacy that challenged even Will’s ability to empathise; they created an almost psychic atmosphere. They swelled into a murmuring cacophony as Will and Hannibal strode across the polished floors, their heels clicking against the marble.

As they walked alongside each other, Will couldn’t help remember what Hannibal had once called himself: a wolf. And as they went in search of their predator, Will felt himself become equally as wolfish and no more the red-hooded victim of the story. They were together ascending to the top of the food chain.

Despite the years and the therapy, Will still couldn’t help but turn his mind to the familiar, methodical layout of story-telling. How much easier it was to grapple with than the complication of real life minds and their never-ending corridors, lined with so many rooms and so many different inhabitants. Although Will had the gift of being able to walk those floors uninvited, he preferred to remain isolated in his own tower. It was blindingly easy to become lost in someone else’s mind.

They came to a reception-like room filled with people, a few coffee-stained chairs and a desk from behind which a man and a woman sat with their computers and stacks of forms surrounding them in neat piles.

It only took Will one look to see their killer.

He grabbed Hannibal’s hand, interlocking their fingers like a happy couple, but then squeezed, digging in his fingernails until he was sure that he had his attention. “It’s her,” he mumbled surreptitiously, trying to remain straight-faced as he stared right at the woman behind the desk, who was currently pre-occupied with another young couple.

“Her?” Hannibal questioned. “Didn’t you say our killer was a man?”

Will nodded. “I got it wrong.”

He’d never been more certain of anything in his life as he looked at the middle-aged woman’s face with her shining black hair that fell as smooth as glass down her back and her warm, chestnut-coloured eyes. She was beautiful, _very_ beautiful, but somehow fell just one step short of true, heart-wrenching beauty, like an angel with a crooked nose. Will could already feel the long, prying fingers of his mind trying to reach out to her, empathise with her hatred and bitterness. It was practically radiating off her, like a glowing aura that he could feel pulling him in. Never had he felt such a strong affinity for another mind. _Never._ And it made him feel nauseous.

Will turned away suddenly and immediately felt Hannibal’s hand land on his back, his mouth coming in close to his ear as he softly asked, “Are you all right, Will?”

Swallowing, Will nodded, soothing down his own panicked mind as it sought to join with hers once again. “I’m— I’m fine,” Will said between gulps, gathering back his own mind, but it felt like trying to pick up handfuls of dry sand. “It’s not entitlement,” Will revealed quietly to Hannibal as they stood in the corner, still unseen amongst the flow of people, “it’s envy.”

“Envious of the couple’s happy ending?” Hannibal questioned and Will shook his head.

“Envious of their beauty,” he corrected him.

“Maybe you shouldn’t speak to her then,” Hannibal said and initially Will believed the words to be a poor form of flirtation, but then he saw the look of seriousness on Hannibal’s face and realised that he was right. Will was beautiful. Even as his youthful looks drained and his face became worn with age and stress, even with the now barely-visible scar on his cheek, Will was the most handsome man in the room at almost any given time, certainly prettier than the woman sitting across the desk. He was destined to always be the swan amongst the pigeons.

“All the more reason I should,” Will replied and as he defiantly sewed his mind shut, weaving it together and trapping it in his head behind an intricate lattice, he made his way over to her desk to stand in line behind the handful of other people waiting. Hannibal hurried after him and stood in line behind him, their bodies pressed close together so that he could whisper directly into his ear.

“Do you intend to act as bait?” Hannibal asked him, sounding as outraged as he could without raising his voice or changing his nonchalant facial expression.

Will kept his eyes on the killer and nodded.

“And you expect me to support this?” he demanded. Again, Will nodded. “You don’t think Jack would like to know what you intend on doing?”

“Of course he would,” Will answered in a flat, reserved voice, “but he wouldn’t allow it.”

“Maybe he would have good reason to forbid it.”

“And our killer works fast. We have no evidence that she’s involved, let alone a suspect. Who knows how many more could die before we manage to get a warrant?”

“Will, this is not your responsibility.”

“Neither was Abigail Hobbs. Now she’s dying in a hospital bed because I wasn’t quick enough.”

“What happens if you’re not quick enough this time?” Hannibal asked in a near hiss, gripping Will’s arm tightly enough for him to turn and look at him. “Your life is on the line.”

“Maybe it’s your turn to prove you can be a hero,” Will said softly, even offering a slight smile before it was quickly flattened. “Don’t be late this time.”

Almost instantaneously, Hannibal released his grip and Will slipped away as the line moved forward. Somehow he knew that this plan may appeal to Hannibal if he was given his own part in the tale.

As they finally came to the front of the queue, Will took a deep breath before grabbing hold of Hannibal’s arm and hanging off it like an enamoured lover while beaming at the women in front of him. She was wearing a lanyard with an identification card, but it hung just below his line of sight. “We’d like to apply for a marriage license,” Will said, watching her face for anything that might make clear whether his spontaneous plan was working. He could see her eyes tracing over his face, then looking over to Hannibal before moving back to him. _How pretty would you be with your eyes pulled out?_ Her lips tightened. Will swallowed down the intense jealousy that was flooding into him from her, leaving only fear in its wake. Without meaning to, he gripped tighter onto Hannibal’s arm, reaching for some form of stability perhaps.

“Of course,” she replied, smiling woodenly as she pulled out some forms. “All you need to do is fill these out and show proof of your identity in the form of a driving license or passport.”

“Thank you,” Hannibal said, taking the forms and walking with Will back to the seats that lined the opposite wall. They still clung together until they got back to the seats, or rather, Will clung to Hannibal. He was only trying to be convincing, he told himself.

“She sees their names and addresses,” Will noted as he took a pen and hurriedly filled out all of his details. “She’ll know exactly where to go and who to look for, then she takes them in their sleep. It’s perfect.”

“How does she manage to kidnap them without their partner noticing?”

“Magic?” Will suggested. “If she’s so envious of every fairy tale prince and princess who walks in, there’s nothing to stop her from finding out how to curse and enchant. It’s surprisingly easy to find, if you know where to look. Words spoken under the moon at midnight. She can be powerful and… special… She just wants…” Will trailed off, realising he was trying to reach out to her again. He was automatically drawn to her thoughts and he knew why. Putting down the pen, he looked at Hannibal, who was still pre-occupied with his own form, and sadly whispered, “She’s me.”

Hannibal paused, looked up. “No, she’s not.”

“She is. I know what it’s like to feel cheated out of a happy ending. I know what it’s like to… to kill a man.” Will struggled with the next part, the words almost trying to cling to the inside of his throat, not allow this confession. “To like it.” Will swallowed and couldn’t look at Hannibal. Why was he always so inclined to peel himself open around Hannibal?

“Then you have every reason to be just like her,” Hannibal said simply, causing Will to throw him a confused look. “But you’re not.”

Will ran over Hannibal’s words in his head a couple of times, then replied, “You’re too forgiving.”

“Or just understanding,” Hannibal amended. “Jack told me everything. I know you shot Garrett Jacob Hobbs. You also saved Abigail Hobbs.” Will opened his mouth to protest, but Hannibal kept talking. “No one could fault you for that, or for exulting in the death of a man who killed so many innocent, young girls. That makes you a hero, Will. More of a hero than me.”

Will remained silent. He couldn’t look at Hannibal, who was gazing at him with a certain kind of admiration that made him uncomfortable. Instead, he thrust his form into Hannibal’s hands and said, “Write down your address. We live together,” then he got up and went to join the back of the line again, Hannibal’s words still racing through his mind.

As he came back to the front of the queue, Will subtly leaned over the desk slightly and saw the name “Regina” printed on the identification card, but didn’t quite manage to make out a surname. When handing over the forms and showing his driver’s license, Will got nothing more than a polite smile from the woman. It was difficult to imagine any murderous intent behind it, if only Will couldn’t feel it like daggers shooting through his face. It took effort to pull away from her thoughts that beckoned him in. He knew they would only unsettle him. Already he was getting images of his own stiff, grey-skinned body, naked and spread-eagled in an alleyway somewhere; his chest cavity pulled open and lungs hanging out in a bloody mess, his heart ripped free and vanished.

“We need to leave now,” Will hissed to Hannibal, pulling him out by his hand and marching purposefully back through the corridors to the sound of their feet striking the stone floors in synchronisation.

As soon as they were out of the building, Hannibal turned to Will and placed his hands on his shoulders. Unlike with Jack earlier that day, the gesture did feel comforting and he accepted it gratefully. Rasping, Will gasped in the fresh air, like it was driving out the vicious thoughts and replacing them with blankness. Hannibal watched him with concerned eyes, squeezed his shoulders with a certain applied pressure that felt like he was pulling down a helium-filled balloon, keeping him grounded.

“Are you okay?” Hannibal asked in a troubled voice and Will almost nodded but instead found he was shaking his head slowly, dazed and mildly frightened. “I’ll drive you back to mine,” Hannibal offered, though it came off as more of a demand as he folded an arm around Will’s waist and pulled him over to his car. Whether because he was too shaken up by being in such close proximity to the murderer, or whether he simply felt the urge to follow Hannibal wherever he went, Will didn’t resist.

“You can read people,” Hannibal stated as they drove down the busy Baltimore streets, constantly stopping and starting with the temperamental flow of traffic.

“Apparently,” Will answered dismissively, unsure whether he liked where he could see the conversation heading.

“Can you read me?”

Will raised his eyebrows. “Do you want me to?”

Hannibal pondered the question for a second. “Maybe not.”

“I thought so,” Will murmured, taking the opportunity while Hannibal was distracted by driving to study his face more intently. The years didn’t seem to show on him. He was as handsome as he had been standing at Will’s door all those years ago. How was it that so much had changed and yet still so little? When they’d reunited, Will had used the word ‘coincidental’, whereas Hannibal had gone for ‘serendipitous’, but perhaps both words fell short. Will’s word was too flippant, while Hannibal’s was too portentous. The real word they were looking for was ‘inevitable’. They were drawn together, as if tethered by a long fishing wire, criss-crossing the paths of their lives. “There’s a certain darkness in you that I can’t reach…”

“I would urge you not to try,” Hannibal suggested mysteriously and Will couldn’t forgo the sadness that haunted his words. He wondered if maybe he was not the first person that Hannibal believed he wasn’t able to save. Perhaps there was another reason other than blind faith in soulmates that drove Hannibal’s persistence in their shared fate.

Will was quiet for a few moments before finally saying something that felt long overdue. “I’m sorry.” Coming to a red light, Hannibal turned and raised an eyebrow at him. “It wasn’t your fault,” Will confessed.

“Thank you,” Hannibal said blankly, “for forgiving me.”

“There’s nothing to forgive,” Will insisted, though the tone of Hannibal’s voice couldn’t give away whether he ever truly believed that he needed to be forgiven or not. “Prophecy is bullshit. It’s like you said: I’m my own hero. I saved myself. It’s not the kind of story that gets passed down by generations, or painted by famous artists. But it has a beginning and a middle and an end. That’s good enough for me.”

“Perhaps. But what about our story?”

“This is it,” Will shrugged, looking between them. “Does it have to be anything more?”

“I want it to be more,” Hannibal answered honestly just as the car pulled to a stop at the curb. Will didn’t have any time to reply as Hannibal turned off the engine and got out. Hannibal had a tendency to leave things hanging off on the end, forcing Will to chase it up. He seemed to know exactly how to keep their story flowing, whether it be leaving with a sudden kiss or years of silence, all of which led them to this exact point in their drawn-out tale: Will entering Hannibal’s dark abode. The house was just as much a modern day castle as Hannibal’s office had been, Will noticed as he followed him up to the front door. He knew that Hannibal wanted him to address what they had just been discussing in the car, so decided to change the topic entirely.

“Is it impenetrable?” Will asked as Hannibal fiddled with a set of keys. “I’m meant to be bait, remember?”

“Why not just stop her at the door?”

“The victims were all taken in their sleep without so much as a sign of a forced entry,” Will explained, still uncertain of his own plan, but realising it was far too late to back out now. “We can’t risk it. We have to be asleep in bed. You have to let me be taken.”

The key turned and the door opened an inch, but Hannibal stayed exactly where he was. He looked down at his feet and then back at Will. “I don’t know if I can do that.”

“It might be the difference between apprehending our killer and letting her know that we’re on to her,” Will countered, trying to repress the swelling of rage in his chest at Hannibal’s obvious attempt at chivalry.

“It might be the difference between you living and dying.”

Will knew that Hannibal was right. He knew that this was a shoddy plan with plenty of room for error and a huge risk to his life, and yet…

Frustrated but lost for words, he simply decided to push on the door and enter Hannibal’s house of his own volition, muttering, “I don’t want to argue about this outside.” Bending to his will, Hannibal followed.

Slowly making his way down the hallway, Will tried not to think about how if his life had gone a little differently, if he hadn’t walked away after that encounter in Hannibal’s office, this could have been his home.

“Would you like something to eat?” Hannibal asked, leading him into the kitchen, understanding that Will had no intention of continuing their dispute inside. They were both now making some attempt to manipulate the other to address their elephant in the room first. However, Will felt more secure now that he wasn’t sitting beside Abigail or struggling to cling onto himself in the presence of a killer who wanted him dead. It was so much easier to not reveal himself now.

“No, thank you,” Will replied, coming to stand anxiously in the middle of the room, finally understanding the weight of his situation. “I’m a little thirsty actually.”

The fridge door opened and Hannibal removed a tall jug of water with lemon slices suspended inside. He brought out two glasses and poured them each a drink. Gratefully accepting his glass, Will took a sip and smiled slightly as he tasted the dry sharpness of the infused citrus, remembering a time when he and Hannibal had sat in his house in Wolf Trap and drank black instant coffee. “We really are from two different worlds,” Will remarked, taking another gulp.

“Not so vastly different as you may think,” Hannibal suggested.

“How so?”

“I also grew up in a large castle, fiercely guarded, and forbidden from leaving,” he revealed with a mysterious smile.

“I didn’t grow up in the tower,” Will corrected him, only just catching onto Hannibal’s ploy to get him to talk about his childhood. Well played. “I grew up in a small town in Louisiana with both my parents.”

“What happened to them?”

“Nothing happened to them,” Will sighed bitterly. “I happened.” Will thought back to his earliest memory of his parents, blurry and out of focus as they were. He couldn’t recall any particular significant or moving events, just snapshots of watching them from doorways, or running around the yard while they looked on. He soon realised that Hannibal was waiting for him to elaborate and decided it was time to tell him the whole story, or as much as he needed to know. “My parents weren’t supposed to be able to conceive. They were both infertile. But they desperately wanted a baby, so they found someone who could make that happen.”

“ _People only fall into fairy tales if they’re stupid,_ ” Hannibal said, quoting what Will had said to him all those years ago. Will smiled, but it was a sad smile. Now Hannibal knew the context of his words.

“They made a deal,” Will sighed, then added a biting reprimand, “A stupid deal.” His hand tightened around the glass. “I grew up knowing about it, too. It was my bedtime story every night. _One day, you’ll have to be locked up and taken away from your mommy and daddy, but only because you’re too bright, too beautiful, too special. Then your true love will save you, Will._ I wasn’t even frightened. I was… excited. _Your true love will save you._ ”

“I’m sorry, Will.”

“Don’t,” Will warned him, tired of the guilt and sympathy constantly radiating off Hannibal in equal measure. He downed the rest of his water and said bluntly, “I want to go to bed now.”

“Of course,” Hannibal agreed, putting down his own glass and beckoning for Will to follow him out of the room. As they walked, Hannibal remarked, “You never asked how I found you in the end, or how I knew that you were my true love.”

“I don’t need to know,” Will shrugged.

“Because you don’t believe in it?” Hannibal asked as they ascended the stairs and from nowhere he took Will’s hand in his, gently guiding him. Will thought back to how Hannibal had quickly exited the car earlier. Now he wondered how much of this was all part of his seduction. Had he known that Will would walk into Jack’s office that morning? Had he known that it would lead Will right back to his bed? He said he knew about Garret Jacob Hobbs, about Abigail. What if he’d been watching and waiting all these years? Will remembered the roses by Abigail’s bedside and realised that he never discovered who left them.

“It’s not important to me,” Will answered frankly. None of it was truly important.

“But do you believe?” Hannibal pressed him, guiding him by the hand like the lovers they were supposed to be and it felt so easy to pretend that’s exactly what they were.

“That we’re destined to be together?”

“That I am your true love.” Will noticed the distinction in Hannibal’s mind between the two beliefs.

“How can I love you when I barely know you. We haven’t even talked in years.”

“We barely talked the last time we met, if I remember correctly,” Hannibal returned with a sly grin, pushing open the door to a bedroom. “Besides, I was only following your wishes.” Hannibal’s hand slipped free of his as he left Will standing at the threshold. Once again, he was leaving Will to enter of his own volition, just as he had left Will his card with a number and an address all those years ago.

Will took a deep breath and asked, “My wishes?” as he stepped through the bedroom door and closed it softly behind him. Hannibal was already sliding off his jacket.

“You were clear that I should never contact you again. So I maintained a distance.”

“What happened to the big bad wolf?” Will snorted, recalling Hannibal’s predatory gaze and dark eyes. “Didn’t you want to stalk your prey? Or did you consider me caught?” His words were flippant, tinged with bitterness, but Will had often worried about that. What if he had been yearning alone, without reciprocation? What if Hannibal was not the hero he had built up in his head and had really only wanted one thing in seeking him out, while spinning him false hope in tales about soulmates and destiny?

“You were with someone else,” Hannibal answered simply as he undid the buttons of his shirt and pulled it swiftly off his shoulders.

“You’d let that get in the way of ‘ _true love_ ’?” Will asked sarcastically, finally deciding to follow suit and undress.

With hooded eyes, Hannibal watched him shed his layers, stating, “I believed that if fate and destiny had any real meaning, we would meet again. As it happens, I was correct. Besides, absence makes the heart grow fonder and I sense that your heart may have swelled.” Will turned around, his face burning. “Don’t mistake my patience for disregard. I still thought about you all the time,” Hannibal admitted. “I see your face when I close my eyes. Even before I met you, I knew every detail of your face so precisely I couldn’t hope to forget it. When you opened the door that morning we met and I saw your face, I knew then that it was all real.”

“You’ve put me on a pedestal, Hannibal,” Will groaned, his heart beating a little faster at Hannibal’s words nonetheless. He had never fixated on Hannibal’s ghost or longed for him every day, but every so often he would miss him and all of the lost futures that he had sacrificed. When Will did think about him, it was a passionate yearning, like being hollowed out and left horribly empty — not that he was ready to let Hannibal know that. “Even if I had any romantic inclinations towards you, the pressure would be too much.” Will saw Hannibal about to object and quickly added, “Not just pressure from you, but from fate and destiny and the whole legend of soulmates. You don’t understand what it’s like: to be cast in gold and see yourself turning to rust.”

“Gold doesn’t rust,” Hannibal pointed out as he climbed under the covers and looked at the space next to him, waiting for Will. Despite their situation, there was a knowing lack of sexual tension between the two of them. This moment was about more than lust and they were both painfully aware of that fact.

“Then maybe I was never gold to begin with,” Will mumbled, staring at the empty space in the bed next to Hannibal. There was still that feeling pulling at his heart, telling him that space was meant for him and always had been. It had been left open all those years. Unlike Will, Hannibal had never tried to fill it with another body, because he believed. And now Will was rewarding his faith by filling that cold space with his warmth, while his own cynicism had brought him nothing. Maybe it was time to start believing again, like that young boy listening to bedtime stories and dreaming of his knight in shining armour.

“This is all my fault,” Hannibal chided himself, misreading Will’s hesitation.

“It’s really not,” Will tried to assure him, finally making the move to climb under the covers, sitting upright with his back against the headboard. “I put my faith in a lie and so did you. We’re both victims.”

“Then is this our second chance?” Hannibal asked and made a move to reach for Will’s hand under the sheets, but Will felt it coming and quickly drew his hand into his lap.

“I just told you Hannibal: I’m not interested in being with you.”

“Then why didn’t we go to Jack Crawford? Why did we go straight to the marriage license office? ”

“Because…” Will sighed, searching for the right words, the right excuse, “because this case feels too personal.”

“This has nothing to do with placing yourself back in the position of that boy stranded in the tower?”

“Stop trying to psychoanalyse me,” Will snapped suddenly, though he knew that Hannibal’s words held a degree of truth. It had been his first thought in the hospital after Hannibal told him his theory about the marriage license clerk. He’d had a glimmer of hope for his happy ending. After all, isn’t that what everyone wants? So after Hannibal had turned off the light and they slid down under the sheets, Will finally whispered, “If fate and destiny has any real meaning… you’ll save me tonight.”

Will left it there. He rolled over and looked out into the darkness. Once again, he waited. He waited for sleep to take him, to be stolen away in the night, to finally be rescued by his true love.

As he began drifting off, he felt a tentative hand land on his hip.

“I promise I won’t be late this time,” Hannibal whispered into the back of Will’s head, perhaps believing that he had already fallen asleep. “I promise I will save you. I will make you mine.”

Then Will felt Hannibal’s arm slip around his waist and pull their bodies together, as naturally as the right key turns in the lock, opening something that had been closed for many years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took forever, but this chapter was destroying me, so I just decided that it was now or never.
> 
> You also may notice that I divided the last chapter in two, partially due to the aforementioned reason, as well as length.
> 
> Coming clean now, the last line about the key, I actually stole from Brokeback Mountain. I read it when I was about 12 years old, but I'll always remember this one line about how Jack and Ennis met again for the first time in years and they kissed "as naturally as the right key turns the lock tumblers". I don't know what it is about that simile that I love, but it has somehow stuck with me after these years.
> 
> A lot of other lines are sneakily lifted from Dragon's Lair through out, if you fancy [a listen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9QF7mbsd10).


End file.
